Scana Corp. announced Monday it will stop construction on a nuclear power plant in South Carolina—one of two in development in the U.S. Project costs ballooned in recent years, and the decision should eventually save electricity customers $7 billion. But the stoppage and others like it may cost everyone more in the long run. The move has implications that last hundreds of years—the residence time of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—as electricity generated from fossil fuels begin to replace aging or expensive nuclear reactors. Nuclear power has long provoked ardent policy fights, historically centered on the perceived safety or danger of splitting atoms to keep consumers’ refrigerators running. Since America’s most famous close-call—the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island—debates have only grown in complexity. Today, it’s not local or environmental opposition but economics that’s crippling industry growth and undercutting the fiscal viability of existing plants. A […]